


Playing Post Office

by FunkyinFishnet



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Correspondence, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Male-Female Friendship, Workplace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-03 13:27:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1071004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FunkyinFishnet/pseuds/FunkyinFishnet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Harry stops travelling with the Doctor, he and Sarah-Jane keep in touch via a rather unusual correspondence. It doesn’t stop them from bickering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playing Post Office

**Author's Note:**

> This came out of nowhere and turned into a sort of tribute to Elisabeth Sladen and Ian Marter, the wonderful actors who played Sarah-Jane Smith and Dr Harry Sullivan and who both died too young. RIP.
> 
> For Harry and Sarah, this story happens after 'Terror of the Zygons' and for Luke, it happens after 'The Man Who Never Was', the last episode of _The Sarah-Jane Adventures_.

 

 

**Written on lined paper, left under the hand of a plastic skeleton in Dr Harry Sullivan's office**

 

 

Harry,

 

 

I know you stole the last of my teabags. I've got a good mind to tell the Brigadier what really happened to his Glenkinchie whisky.

 

 

Sarah.

 

 

**Written on the back of a torn poster advertising the next radiographics meeting, left pinned to the pocket of Sarah-Jane Smith's anorak, hanging on a hatstand in the Doctor's laboratory**

 

 

Sorry about that, old thing. It was a medical emergency, check my report for yesterday. And you wouldn't break your promise over a few teabags, would you?

 

 

Harry

 

 

P.S By the way, Yates wants us to go out for a drink with him next week. He thinks he’s found just the place to provide you with your sort of story.

 

 

 

**Written on UNIT-headed notepaper, left under Dr Harry Sullivan's favourite mug – a white one decorated with a James Bond silhouette pointing a gun towards an explosion.**

 

 

Harry,

 

 

Morris and Pendleton needing refreshments after spending the day tracking down what turned out to be an escaped leopard is not a medical emergency, especially since the canteen was still open! Yes, I have spoken to Morris and Pendleton and they claim that you produced the teabags and offered to put the kettle on so that they didn't have to go all the way downstairs.

 

 

So, Dr Sullivan, you need to change your report.

 

 

P.S. What exactly do you and Mike think is my kind of story? Or for that matter my kind of pub??

 

 

 

**Written on a sheet from a medical notepad, left under a large chunk of orange crystal on a workbench in the Doctor's laboratory.**

 

 

Sarah,

 

 

You know how bad the tack in the canteen often is and with the state they were in, they needed something to settle them quickly. Their story was pretty exciting, you ought to write about it. Did you hear about Benton's acrobatics with the netting and the boat hook?

 

 

Harry.

 

 

**Written on the back of a flyer advertising the latest innovation in vacuum cleaners, left folded up in the mouth of the plastic skeleton in Dr Harry Sullivan's office.**

 

 

So you used the last of my teabags (and probably some of the Brig’s Glenkinchie too!) all to hear a story from a couple of breathless squaddies about Sergeant Benton's brush with death thanks to Whipsnade's escaped leopard. Don't think I'll be forgetting about this any time soon.

 

 

Sarah

 

 

P.S. I've already filed that story. My editor said it sounded like something out of a Boys Own Adventure Book. When did you get rid of your collection, or is that still an ongoing case?

 

 

**Written on a tatty piece of graph paper, in bright red felt-tip, left on a pile of scientific journals in the Doctor's laboratory.**

 

 

Sarah,

 

 

Yates is very sure about this pub, you know. After all, Croft was right when he told you about that market and brown ale business; didn't your editor like that one? Not bad for a couple of squaddies, eh?

 

 

Harry

 

 

P.S. Now look here, if any more of my books go missing, there won't be a case at all because I'll know exactly who the thief is! Some things are sacred.

 

 

**Written on notepad paper, smeared with grass stains and what could have been purple paint, left on Dr Harry Sullivan's chair.**

 

 

Harry,

 

 

It's all very well travelling the universe and working with a hush-hush paramilitary organisation, but the Official Secrets Act leaves me precious little to actually write about. Tell Mike I'm free to visit his pub on Wednesday, TARDIS-depending.

 

 

Sarah

 

 

P.S. It would serve you right and make you think twice about stealing my teabags again.

 

 

**Written on smudged index cards, left under a sooty beaker in the Doctor's laboratory**

 

 

Sarah,

 

 

Right, Yates knows you're a maybe for Wednesday, he says that's fair enough seeing as we're both UNIT-depending. You know, it’s been far too long, old thing.

 

 

Harry

 

 

P.S. For the life of me, I can't work out where you get your tea from. None of the shops around here seem to stock it. I don't suppose you could buy me a tin, could you? I'll bring the Jelly Babies.

 

 

**Written on a magazine subscription form, left under an oddly-shaped green teabag tin on Dr Harry Sullivan's desk.**

 

 

This doesn't make us even, Harry.

 

 

Sarah

 

 

P.S. Don't eat all the red ones.

 

 

*

 

 

Several decades later, undertaking the difficult task of sorting through all his mother’s belongings, Luke Smith found scraps of a conversation carried out via some very strange-looking letters. He glanced up at one of the photographs pinned to an attic beam; it showed a handsome smiling dark-haired man dressed for cold weather. Luke vividly remembered his Mum's words - _oh, Harry, he did so much good with his vaccine work_. He remembered her mentioning a funeral.

 

 

He looked at the photograph again. Had his Mum been on the other side of the camera? Had she been the reason for that smile?

 

 

A tremor shook through Luke and he wished that he’d gotten the chance to meet this Dr Harry Sullivan, just once, so that he could have asked.

 

 

_-the end_


End file.
